On September 9, 1958, the voters of Orcas Island in San Juan County approve the establishment of a port district on the island, the primary purpose of which is to purchase and operate an airstrip to serve island residents. The Port's first three elected port commissioners move quickly to arrange an initial bond issue for financing, then purchase a small existing airstrip from a local family in 1959 and prepare a comprehensive plan for airport development. Major improvements are made to the airport in the 1970s, including paving the original grass landing strip with asphalt. Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the Port acquires additional land, constructs airplane hangars, improves runway lighting, installs a wildlife fence, and makes other safety improvements. Much of this work is accomplished with grant money from the Federal Aviation Administration, and future funding is put at risk when it is found that a provision in the original deed conflicts with FAA regulations. While the Port and the FAA work to resolve the problem, the port commission goes forward with plans to improve and expand an airport that plays an ever-increasing role in the island's residential and economic development.
Islands Apart
Orcas Island, the largest of the San Juan Island chain, saw its first significant non-Native presence in the late 1850s, when the Hudson's Bay Company established a deer-hunting camp at the westernmost of the island's three long inlets, known ever since as Deer Harbor. Louis Cayou, one of the hunters, and his Lummi-Saanich wife, Mary Anne, homesteaded at the head of the harbor, becoming the first pioneer family on Orcas. But the nationality of the islands remained in dispute for several more years, with the British government and Washington's Territorial government both asserting ownership.
After nearly two decades of bickering and joint military occupation, in 1871 the United States and Britain agreed to arbitrate the matter. In October 1872 the arbitrator, Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, ruled in favor of the United States. Within the year, Washington's Territorial legislature created San Juan County, including in its ambit the three biggest islands, Orcas, San Juan, and Lopez, together with hundreds more islands, reefs, and rocks that dotted the straits between Washington and Vancouver Island.
The dispute had not slowed settlement of the islands, and by the end of the nineteenth century Orcas Island was a thriving center for fruit production, logging, and limestone quarrying. For decades, and well into the twentieth century, the major inhabited islands of the San Juan chain were laced together, and to the mainland, by the "mosquito fleet," an armada of smallish steamers that had been plying Puget Sound since the 1850s. But the advent of the railroads and motor vehicles and the rise of farming in Eastern Washington and California soon made the islands' primary products uncompetitive. The added cost of getting goods from the islands and into the mainland's stream of commerce proved prohibitive, and San Juan County's commercial links to the outside world largely withered and died.
Car-ferry service to San Juan and Orcas islands started in the early 1920s, and by the end of the decade had been extended to Shaw and Lopez islands. But the boats were relatively slow and ran on a set schedule. The islands remained fairly isolated, difficult to get to, and an inconvenient place to be if in need of prompt medical care. This, combined with the demise of many of the islands' sustaining industries, led to a long period of stasis. Largely self-contained, but unable to benefit from off-island trade, the total population of San Juan County actually declined between 1910 and 1960, from 3,600 to 2,872.
Commercial Aviation Eases Island Isolation
Private aviation in America received a huge boost from World War II, when thousands of men and women were trained as military pilots. At war's end, thousands more took advantage of the GI Bill to attend civilian flying schools. Aviation was no longer the exclusive province of the commercial carriers and a few rich hobbyists. It moved quickly into the mainstream, and few places in Washington were to derive as much immediate benefit from this as the San Juan Islands. Private pilots soon had rigged makeshift landing strips in cow pastures and on fields and beaches, and in July 1947, Bob Schoen (1919-2003), a war veteran, started Orcas Island Air Service with his wife, Mary Brown Schoen. It was reputed to be the first small, scheduled commuter airline on the West Coast, and offered two flights a day to Bellingham and back.
Although Bob Schoen was far from the first to land an airplane on Orcas Island, his was the first commercial aviation operation, and it came at a time when nearly everything the island's residents did not produce themselves had to be brought in by barge or ferry. In 1948, the name of the airline was changed to Island Sky Ferries, and legendary island pilot Roy Franklin (1924-2011) came to work for the Schoens. The Schoens operated the service until 1950, when it was sold to a local doctor, Wallace Howarth, who soon shut it down. But in 1951, Franklin partnered with island resident Captain Harold Ferris (1903-1985) to restart Island Sky Ferries, using a portion of Ferris's Orcas property as a landing strip. In 1953, Franklin bought out Ferris and moved the small airline to San Juan Island, but the Ferris family continued to maintain their small airstrip on Orcas.
The coming of commercial air traffic spurred the economies of the larger San Juan islands, and in subsequent years their populations burgeoned. Much of this growth was fueled by the convenience and security provided island residents by these early commercial air companies and their successors, and so important did this prove that it was not long before Orcas residents decided that a publicly owned airport would best serve their needs.
A Port is Born
On August 1, 1958, the citizens of Orcas Island gathered at a public meeting to discuss and debate the merits of establishing a publicly owned airport, either through the formation of a port district or by hosting a county-run airstrip on the island. The meeting was called by the San Juan County Board of Commissioners after it had received a written petition signed, as the law required, by more than 10 percent of the qualified electors residing on Orcas Island.
Although contemporary accounts are fragmentary, it appears that the establishment of a port district was the overwhelming favorite option at the meeting. Only one participant voted against the idea of a public airport entirely, and two preferred the county option. The votes in favor of creating a port district comprising all of the island totaled 130, and the die was cast. On August 4, 1958, the San Juan County Board of County Commissioners found that
"the lands situate within the boundaries of said proposed district will be benefitted thereby, and the creation of said District would be to the benefit, welfare and convenience of the residents thereof ..." (San Juan County Board of Commissioners Resolution 32, 1958).
The port district measure appeared on the September 9, 1958, ballot with a simple question for the voters: "Shall a Port District to be known as the Port of Orcas and containing all of the area of Orcas Island be created?" (Special Election ballot). As the results of the public meeting predicted, it passed by a wide margin, with voters approving an island-wide port district composed of three commissioner districts. All three seats on the new port commission were uncontested, and Clarence A. King, representing East Sound; Kenneth D. Pearson, representing Deer Harbor, West Sound, and Orcas; and Elton W. Sawyer, representing Doe Bay and Olga were selected to serve as the first commissioners of the Port of Orcas.
Although the Port's founding documents do not say so explicitly, it is clear that the primary, if not sole, motive behind establishing a port district was to establish and operate an airport. That was the first order of business, and even today, more than 50 years later, the operation of the Orcas Island Airport dominates the port commission's activities.
Fulfilling the Mandate
Harold Ferris, a sea captain by trade, had learned to fly shortly after World War II and soon decided to create a landing strip on property he owned about one-half mile north of the island's Eastsound community. ("East Sound" is the name of the island's largest bay, but the community located at its head is called "Eastsound.") The grass strip, which came to be known as the Eastsound Airport, was nothing fancy, and Ferris's daughter could recall having to put out smudge pots whenever someone wanted to make a night landing. After Roy Franklin purchased Ferris's share of Island Sky Ferries and moved the operation to San Juan Island, the family was unable to operate the strip at a profit, and in 1958 Captain Ferris made it known that he would close it down on August 1, 1958. On that same date, those who attended the public hearing on Orcas overwhelmingly approved the creation of a port district, setting the stage for an island-wide election the following month.
After the election of September 9, 1958, the three port commissioners wasted no time carrying out their mandate. On January 14, 1959, they finalized the purchase of the Ferry airstrip property for $14,000, financed by the sale of $20,000 in general obligation bonds. They established a first budget of $1,024 and voted to impose a property tax levy of two mils to finance Port operations. With those preliminary steps in place, they set about fulfilling the legal requirement of preparing a comprehensive plan for airport development.
There was one legal glitch, however. From the available records, it appears that the Board of County Commissioners had not taken the final step of passing a resolution canvassing and affirming the results of the vote of September 9, 1958. This was a requirement of the state law authorizing port districts, and it brought the legality of the new Port into question. If there was no legal Port, and thus no authorized port commission, what was to become of the work of the previous two years?
This could have had serious repercussions, including invalidation of the Ferris land purchase and the comprehensive plan the commissioners had prepared for the airport in 1959. But the matter was resolved on December 5, 1960, when the San Juan County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution "nunc pro tunc" legitimizing the Port, its commissioners, and the actions they had taken since being elected. ("Nunc pro tunc" is Latin legalese for "now for then," and means that the terms of an order or resolution are retroactive to the time that the order or resolution properly should have been made). This put the Port on sound legal ground.
With Help from Uncle Sam
It appears that for several years after its creation, the Port was content to simply operate and maintain the existing landing field that had been purchased from the Ferris family. The population of the island was stable and remained low in the first decade of the Port's existence, and it was not until the 1970s that significant airport development took place, enabled in large part by grants from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The airstrip was partially paved by 1971, and, with the help of $315,000 in FAA funds, additional land was purchased and further improvements made in the years 1975-1977, including the completion of the paving with asphalt. In that same decade, the population of San Juan County, including Orcas Island, started to boom, and between 1970 and 1980 it more than doubled, from 3,856 to 7,838. Between 1980 and 2000 the population nearly doubled again, reaching 14,077, of whom 4,649 lived on Orcas Island, more than had occupied the entire county just 30 years earlier.
As the population grew, so did the critical importance the airport had for its water-locked population, and over the two decades from 1980 to 2000, the Port received more than $1.5 million in FAA funding, much of which was used to acquire additional land and upgrade facilities. The largesse has continued, and since the turn of the new century, the Port of Orcas has received more than $1.75 million in additional federal aid. With these funds, together with operating income and smaller grants from state government, the airport has been able to expand and improve its facilities. In 2003, FAA grants enabled the Port to build a wildlife fence, at a cost of more than $500,000. More recently, in 2008, the Port of Orcas used federal funding to commission a complete study of the airport's current facilities and to estimate its future needs and establish the costs and benefits of installing an instrument-approach capability.
But the FAA does not give out money without conditions, one of which is compliance with federal requirements on a host of aviation issues. These include restrictions on the permissible uses of land adjacent to airports, and it was on this issue that FAA regulations and the terms of the original Ferris deed came into conflict, triggering a debate that has waxed and waned for over a decade.
Vested Rights vs. Government Regulations
The dispute between the Port of Orcas and the FAA had its roots in a provision of the Ferris deed that allowed the Ferris family, and anyone taking title from the Ferris family, to use the airstrip "free of charge," providing they pay the same charges assessed against "others for like use." The FAA's problem was that it considered the presence of housing adjacent to the airport, and access for private planes through openings in the airport fence, to be uses incompatible with the operation of a commercial airport.
The Port was faced with a dilemma. It was legally bound by the original deed from the Ferris family, and on its face this granted all the property owners who purchased from the family (which, by 2009, numbered 26) the right to store their planes on their own property and to access the airport for takeoffs and landings by going "through the fence." But since the 1970s almost all of the airport's expansions and improvements had been accomplished with FAA funds, and the continued flow of federal money could depend on compliance with FAA rules. If the Port adhered to those rules, it would have to violate the provisions of its deed and may have opened itself up to legal action by property owners. If it didn't, it ran the risk of losing federal funding for future airport development and improvements. It seemed a true Catch-22.
There were on-again, off-again negotiations with the FAA, and in 2009 the commissioners finally voted in favor of levying a $100 fee on through-the-fence users, passing a resolution to that effect. It was rejected by the FAA, which demanded that the Port impose on abutting landowners the full tie-down fee charged to fliers who stored their planes on airport land, so that all would be treated equally. But the stubborn fact remained that these abutting landowners were not tying their planes down on Port-owned land.
Finally, in 2010, the board and the Federal Aviation Administration reached an agreement that would charge through-the-fence users one-half of the annual tie-down fee of $320 assessed against fliers who store their planes on airport property. This was based on a determination that one-half of the fee charged such pilots was for access to the field, and that therefore it was fair to charge abutting landowners who use the airport but store their planes on their own property one-half of that charge, or $160 per year. To insure that the new plan is enforceable, the Port petitioned the San Juan County Superior Court to rule on its legal validity. (As of February 2011 a decision is pending.)
Orcas Island Airport Today
From its start as Captain Ferris's small, grass landing strip, the Orcas Island Airport has grown to a 63-acre airfield that is considered an "Essential Public Facility" under the state's Growth Management Act. In 1993, the number of port commissioners was raised from three to five, and since 1995 the commissioners have been elected on an island-wide basis. They no longer directly operate the airport, which today is done by a hired airport manager, but they oversee all Port activity and plan future growth and improvements.
The Orcas Island Airport's single runway is 2,900 feet long, sufficient to accommodate smaller private jets, such as the Cessna Citation, but serves propeller-driven planes almost exclusively. In 2009, there were approximately 6,000 passenger "operations" (i.e. takeoffs and landings) and 1,000 freight operations. When non-commercial, general aviation operations are factored in, the total takeoff and landings in 2009 totaled more than 20,000.
The airport currently (2010) leases land to the owners of 37 private hangars and owns two large hangars, which are leased to commercial operators. One of these is Aeronautical Services Inc., which in addition to its freight activities, also runs the airport's self-service fuel operations. The Port owns the terminal building, which houses its offices, a passenger lounge and ticketing area, and a public-meeting facility.
The most recent available information illustrates the airfield's importance to the island community it serves. It hosts two regularly scheduled commercial carriers, Kenmore Air Service and San Juan Airlines, and two charter lines, Northwest Sky Ferry and Island Air, the latter of which also supplies an air-ambulance service. Other commercial tenants include freight carriers Aeronautical Services Inc. and Empire Airlines, and Magic Air Tours, which offers scenic biplane rides. A hangar-based, aircraft A&P (airframe and powerplant) mechanic is also available adjacent to the airport at Gashawk Services.
In additional to its commercial operations, the Orcas Island Airport maintains a helipad dedicated to use for emergency transportation by Airlift Northwest, a critical service that has no doubt saved many lives over the years. In addition, local pilots regularly fly their neighbors to the mainland without charge for medical treatment not available in the islands. This all-volunteer effort includes transporting cancer patients needing daily radiation treatments, and these flights have saved island residents hundreds of hours that would have been spent driving and waiting in ferry lines.
Each year the Orcas Aviation Association and the Experimental Aircraft Association, Chapter #937, with the help of the local volunteers, put on the Orcas Old-Fashioned Fly In, an aviation get-together that features vintage and experimental planes, military aircraft, an antique auto show, food, fun, and camping "under the wing." The 2010 event, which drew approximately 100 planes from outside the island, was the 26th consecutive fly in. Each year the Port provides parking, and aircraft tie-downs and camping spots with ocean views.
If the through-the-fence agreement holds firm, thus assuring continued financial support from the FAA, the Orcas Island Airport hopes to continue to improve its critical service to the community by expanding and upgrading its facilities. One goal under study is the installation of equipment that would permit bad-weather, instrument approaches to the airport, thus eliminating the approximately one month of each year during which it experiences "marginal" conditions for visual flight. But no matter what the future holds, one thing is certain -- Orcas Island will always be an island, and it will always need the convenience and security that the Port and its airport have been providing since 1958.
